te adjustment between
economy and emphasis in its succinct yet touching train of incidents.
Furthermore, it is also, in the English version of the King James
translators, a little masterpiece of style. The words are simple,
homely, and direct. Most of them are of Saxon origin, and the majority
are monosyllabic. Less than half a dozen words in the entire narrative
contain more than two syllables. And yet they are set so delicately
together that they fall into rhythms potent with emotional effect. How
much the story gains from this mastery of prose may be felt at once
by comparing with the King James version parallel passages from the
standard French Bible. The English monosyllabic refrain, with its
touching balance of rhythm, loses nearly all of its esthetic effect in
the French translation: "_Car mon fils, que voici, etait mort, mais il
est ressuscite; il etait perdu, mais il est retrouve._" And that very
moving sentence about the elder son, "And he was angry, and would not
go in: therefore came his father out and entreated him," becomes
in the French Bible, "_Mais il se mit en colere, et ne voulut point
entrer; et son pere etant sorti, le priait d'entrer._" No especial
nicety of ear is necessary to notice that the first is greatly
written, and the second is not.

And this leads us to the general consideration that even a perfectly
constructed story will fail of the uttermost effect unless it be at
all points adequately written. After Poe had, with his intellect,
outlined step by step the structure of "Ligeia," he was obliged to
confront a further problem,--a problem this time more emotional than
intellectual--the problem of writing the story with the thrilling and
enthralling harmony of that low, musical language which haunts us like
the echo of a dream. It is one thing to build a story; it is quite
another thing to write it: and in Poe's case it is evident that
an appreciable interval of time must have elapsed between his
accomplishment of the first, and his undertaking of the second,
effort. He built his stories intellectually, in cold blood; he wrote
them emotionally, in esthetic exaltation: and the two moods are so
distinct and mutually exclusive that they must have been successive
instead of coexistent. Some authors build better than they write;
others write better than they build. Seldom, very seldom, is a man
equipped, as Poe was, with an equal mastery of structure and of style.
Yet though unity of form may be